Sweet Sweet Sweet
by Unknownlight
Summary: Dreams: A visual display of the intricacies of life; a reveal of one's true thoughts and feelings; an outlet for the subconscious mind to form its judgements; a warped reflection of reality. Sleep tight.
1. Sonic: Behind the Mask

**Sweet Sweet Sweet**

* * *

_A two-tailed fox was screeching. "No, NO! Please, stop! Somebody, _help me!_"_

_"Coming buddy...just hang in there..."_

—

Sonic was laughing.

Surrounding him were the smoking remains of Eggman's latest and greatest eggbot. It was basically a giant crabmeat, but piloted by Eggman himself. It was anything _but_ a challenge for the blue blur.

Sonic glanced around the arena he was in—the pillars keeping the upper balcony floor suspended were smashed to bits (the hedgehog had lured Eggman into breaking them so that the balcony would fall onto the crabmeat's head), the walls and floor were torn apart from the machine gun bullets and missiles that had been fired at him, and the ground was so utterly littered with scrap metal that it almost tore apart Sonic's sneakers.

Then, of course, there was also the vividly red, nicely polished spring that had allowed the hedgehog to homing attack the crabmeat's power supply. It was still there, as there always was, for whatever the situation called for.

_Where do all these springs come from? _Sonic pondered to himself. _Eh...guess I shouldn't complain._

His victory against the giant crabmeat wasn't why he was laughing though. He had won dozens of 'boss battles' over the years, defeating Eggman didn't feel quite as exhilarating as it used to. No, there was a much more specific reason Sonic was feeling good right now: for the first time ever, the Eggmobile had broken down during the mad scientist's escape.

This was practically a cause for celebration.

A constant annoyance for everyone involved with fighting Eggman was that he always escaped. _Always_. In the exact same way, every time, without fail. And this way was via the Eggmobile. The moment the Doctor realized that he had lost whatever battle he was fighting, he and his Eggmobile would detach from whatever vehicle he was piloting and launch off into the distance at speeds impossible to trace and impossible to follow.

But not this time.

This time, the Eggmobile broke down halfway through the classic escape sequence.

Still laughing, the blue hedgehog casually walked through the rubble toward the panicking round-bellied scientist who was fiddling around with the buttons on his mobile-egg, obviously not accepting that the thing had fallen apart. "Hey Eggy!" Sonic called to him with glee. "It's over. You think you might as well give up now?"

Eggman sharply twisted his head to the side and stared at Sonic. "Never!" he spat. The Doctor climbed out of his wreaked Eggmoblie and stood up, facing the hedgehog with a determined frown on his face. "I may not have any weapons, but that that just means I'll have to take you on myself! A good, hand-to-hand fight!"

...

Eggman sincerely hoped that Sonic's current laughing fit, of which he was wriggling on the ground apparently unable to keep himself from howling with laughter at the Doctor's invitation to battle, would lead to the hedgehog having a heart attack.

"D-Did you just..just...ask me to—me to..._fight_ you, one on one? With, with none of your weapons?" Sonic asked while attempting to stand up, with almost every word interrupted by a giggle or another full-on fit of laughter.

Eggman frowned. "Yes, yes, that is correct."

Sonic's face turned a shade of red as the hedgehog tried to keep his laughter in. "S-Stop, this is just too funny, you're killing me!" he spluttered.

"Yes, that is the point," the doctor deadpanned.

The blue blur took a few deep breaths and tried to calm himself down and regain his composure. "Lay it on me then," he said to the scientist, whose features had contorted in a way that was just _begging_ the hedgehog to laugh again. "How can you _possibly _think you could fight me? I'm not sure if you've noticed, but you're a fat slob. You can't do anything without your machinery. _I_, on the other hand, have pointy knives on my back that I could send your direction at seven hundred miles an hour if I wanted to. Can't you just admit defeat for once?"

"Never!" Eggman screamed, ripping off his skin-tight jacket and shirt, revealing hairy, bubbly, pink fat that rolled over itself in layers. The fat demanded attention; when looking at Eggman, in this state, you only see a large, disgusting, wrinkly ball of flesh with four sticks and a head attached to it. He assumed a sumo-wrestling position, ready to fight.

In response to this repulsive event, Sonic nearly squealed in a way most unmanly. "What is _wrong_ with you!" Sonic yelled while closing one eye and squinting with the other, not wanting to look at the train wreck but not able to look away either. "That's _gross!_ Are you _insane_, Eggman! No, I'm serious, have you literally gone mad!"

Eggman scowled. "I'm not insane! Sonic, you have assumed for far too long that I am fat. Everyone does. I use this to my advantage, you all underestimate me when I'm without weapons. Well, what would you think if I told you that what you thought was fat was actually _muscle?!_" he screamed.

On cue, the Doctor sucked in his stomach and flexed every muscle in his body at the same, giving the impression that his fat was literally reshaping itself. The blubber folded into itself into separate 'pockets' on his gut, then reduced itself in specific points around the 'pockets' to make it look like Eggman had a twelve-pack. His fat also moved upwards into his arms, buffing out his biceps and generally making his arms thick and powerful. When his arms were done, the leftover fat moved downward and buffed up his legs too.

When this transformation was over and done with, which only took half a second, Eggman had turned from a fat slob into what looked like a heavy-weight champion wrestler. Sonic found this even _more_ disturbing.

In fact, the sudden switch from blubber-butt Eggman to muscle-maniac Eggman was too much to take for the poor hedgehog. He wanted to puke.

So he did.

...

After he finished coughing up the leftovers and wiping his mouth with his glove, Sonic looked up to see a large, powerful fist an inch away from his face and counting.

A flash of purple. Then everything was black.

—

Sonic gasped and quickly sat up from his sleeping position, breathing deeply, not knowing where he was. The first thoughts that came to his head was _Oh, oh god. Aah, it was just a dream. Well, a nightmare is more like it. Keep it together, Sonic._

The second thing that came to his head was, _Where the hell am I?_

The hedgehog blinked a few times and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Being the naturally speedy creature he was, he was annoyed that he had to wait so long to doing something as basic as _seeing_. Ah, there we go, it's clearing up now...

He was in a forest. By his feat was a pile of burnt logs layered on top of ash. Obviously a campfire had been going, but it had gone out a while ago. He looked down and saw that he was sitting upright on the forest floor with a sleeping bag messily wrapped around his legs. He must of been squirming a lot in his sleep for the sleeping bag to have gotten so tangled up.

He then looked to his left and saw Tails sleeping in a sleeping bag too next to him. It was about now that Sonic finally remembered why he was sleeping in a forest, and it was also about now that Sonic mentally beat himself up for having such a slow memory when tired. He needed to do better than that.

The hedgehog noticed that his two-tailed companion wasn't having a very relaxing night either. Tails was shivering in his sleep, his sleeping bag had the impression that it had been squirmed around in as well. His eyes were obviously rapidly moving around in his sockets, Sonic could tell even with Tails's eyelids closed.

_Poor kid, _the hedgehog thought, hoping that the fox wasn't having quite as disturbing of a dream as _he_ had.

* * *

**WARNING: This fic is brutally strange for strangeness's sake. It makes sense in the end, though whether you'll be able to bring yourself to read it to that point...**

**Each dream is written in a mostly different genre, so despite the above chapter being crack-humour, don't expect the rest to be this crazy.**


	2. Tails: Dagger of Ruins

**This chapter is why the story is rated M. Do not read if gore makes you squeamish.**

* * *

"Stop! Please...STOP!" screamed a twelve year-old human boy, teary eyed, as he ran through Central City, away from the flying fox that was stalking him. The two-tailed fox in question was, while still fairly far away, quickly catching up to the child who was visibly struggling to keep on running instead of collapsing in exhaustion.

"You...are NOT...getting..._away!_" screamed Tails while panting heavily, obviously struggling at flying just as much as the boy under him was struggling at running.

The fox cub knew he was faster than the boy. Just another few short moments would be all it would take for Tails to catch up.

The boy must have understood that he was losing this race, as he suddenly turned on his heels and dashed into a mall department store. Tails growled at this, as it forced him to land and chase him by foot instead, which was slower. The boy shoved his way through the crowds of surprised people with the strength of one who knows they're in lethal danger, not noticing or caring that he was knocking over and hurting innocent people in the process.

Tails was even worse. He randomly grabbed display products, like a finely crafted bowl made of clay, and threw it in the general direction of the kid, hoping to hit him but instead usually hitting an innocent bystander in the head.

_He's getting away!_ Tails yelled panicky in his head. The boy in question had just sprinted halfway down an escalator, leaped from there over the railing and into a water fountain to his right, and sprinted off again into the depths of the mall. Tails responded by taking flight, even though control was limited with a low ceiling above him, and sped toward the center part of the mall, skipping the escalator obstacle and rushing to the corner he had just seen the kid run around. However, the moment Tails made it around the corner, his soft face met hard steel as the boy swung a randomly-appearing shovel at his head like a baseball bat.

Falling to the ground like a rock and firmly clutching his head in an unsuccessful attempt to lessen the pain, Tails was unable to prevent the redheaded boy from dashing to the mall exit, threateningly waving his shovel at the other shoppers as if they were stupid enough to think that they could stop him from leaving and that they could help these two brawling children settle their dispute peacefully.

After a minute or two of head-clutching, Tails finally got up off the floor and, with a groan, started a slow run to the exit of the mall. He gruffly pushed open the door and looked at his surroundings. He was at the corner of Mission Street and Act Avenue, a rather desolate business-centred area. Most of the people there were human businessmen who were rushing around, all looking like they were trying to look busy. There were only two sapients around, a rabbit and a duck. The duck was complaining that they were lost, and the was rabbit muttering to himself that they should have taken a left turn at Albuquerque.

_Tourists. Pfft! _Tails thought.

Realizing that the boy was long gone, but not willing to give up, Tails took the the sky and overlooked the city from a birds-eye view, searching for the telltale sign of the universe bending itself to the will of the child. After noting that a few regularly-busy streets below were curiously devoid of cars, the fox dropped to a hundred feet and took a closer look at the area. Sure enough, the boy was stumbling down the street, shovel still in hand, a smile on his face as his looked around the empty streets, with no cars around to slow him down. That smile suddenly turned into a look of horror when he saw Tails hovering above him, snarl on his face.

The boy suddenly stopped and started running the other way, causing Tails to overshoot on the tackle he was planning and almost hitting his head on the cement sidewalk below. The fox quickly regained some altitude and turned around—only to see the the redheaded boy had turned around _again_, passing straight underneath him. Growling, Tails twisted himself around in midair, trying not to lose sight of the boy...only to hear alarms coming from behind him.

The fox turned around for the third time in as many seconds to see for himself the reason the boy had started running the other way in the first place: the police were coming.

_Damn,_ thought the fox, suddenly regretting making such a scene at the mall.

The pure white police pods were sleek and fast, the latest of their kind from Blue Ridge Auto. Tails started flying his fastest away from the police, trying to follow the boy who had ducked into an alleyway a mere moment ago, but justice was fast, and caught up to Tails within seconds. One of the policemen, a wolf, fired a few knobs at the hovering Tails with a stun gun. One of those shots hit the fox square in the shoulder.

_Just my luck, _Tails thought as the stunning knob did its magic and paralyzed the fox for a short moment, which was more than enough time for his tails to stop twirling and to send him painfully crashing into the ground. The wolf officer efficiently ran on all fours to get the the fox before the stunning knob wore out, and, having arrived, he gruffly pulled him up by the shoulders and forcefully pushed Tails over to the police pod.

Tails couldn't think straight, the knob stunned his mind nearly as much as it stunned the rest of his body. But one thing was clear to him: a few seconds ago he was flying high and free from the police, and now he was already captured by them. If the police were able to work that fast, the fox knew that only have a few scant seconds left to make a move before he would find himself imprisoned in the containment capsule at the back of the police pod. By then, it would be much too late.

With a sharp cry of pain, Tails broke out of his spectral bonds and attacked the wolf with a flurry of flailing claws. Caught by surprise, the wolf reflexively let go of Tails and raised his arms to his face in an attempt to keep his features from being permanently disfigured by scars. Taking full advantage of this, the fox jumped up and footstool-hopped off the wolf's chest, both sending him into the air and knocking over the winded officer. By the time the second officer helped the first one to his feet, Tails had long flown off.

Fatigue catching up to him, Tails landed in a remote alley, hoping that he was far away enough that the police wouldn't find him for a while. He was quite annoyed that he was now on the trail of the law, as if he didn't have more important things to worry about. Trying to look inconspicuous, the fox wandered out of the alley and fluidly joined the rush of people on the streets. His gaze wandered to the sky as he attempted to figure out what to do next.

_Okay, the kid got away. Damn. He couldn't have made it out of the city, though—at least not yet. I've gotta get back to the Tornado, it'll be much quicker to find him from there. Meanwhile, now I have a police record. Great. What other wonderful things will happen today?_

On cue with Tails's tempt of fate, it was then that the missiles hit.

Tails saw three of them raining down near him. They were quite sleek little things, a little less than a metre long and about twenty-five centimetres wide—fairly long, narrow tubes. They had pointed tips at the front and had thin triangular plates lining the sides for aerodynamic stability. The missiles appeared to be made of an aluminium alloy and were also chrome plated, just for the effect.

Not that anyone had the time to appreciate the effect this gave the missiles, of course.

On the rounded side on each of the missiles there was a familiar logo spray-painted on, a red-coloured logo that looked like an abstract image of the grinning face of a bald man with glasses and a mustache. Knowing that there was no time to do anything, Tails used what time there was remaining to snarl at the face. Then a missile impacted a building next to him.

When faced with an overload of adrenaline, your brain speeds up and is able to process thoughts much faster than normal. Due to this, right after Tails instinctively slapped shut his eyes due to the blinding flash of light the explosion produced, he was able to formulate a complete thought within a small amount of time: _Well that wasn't too bad. My retinas sting but I figured an explosion near me would hurt more._

Apparently in direct response, a microsecond later the laws of physics regained their control and the shock-wave hit. The fox was blown backwards through the air with the force to throw him a half-mile. Tails instinctively attempted to turn around in mid-air so that he could see where he was going and possibly use the momentum from the blast to fly away to safety. Unfortunately, Tails's half-mile journey was interrupted by the brick wall of a side of a building, of which he slammed into face-first.

There were no coherent thoughts that went through the fox's head at first. All he felt was the pain. The excruciating pain. The pain the swelled through his nerves and spread the agonizing burn to all parts of his build. When he hit the wall, he quite literally felt and heard an alarming _crunch_. Due to this, the first thought he had amounted to: _Am I a potato chip? Did somebody just bite off a piece of me?_

Apparently as a consequence for thinking up that horribly humourous thought, a new wave of pain shot through Tails, somehow making the already-unbearable pain even worse. A few tears escaped the kit's eyes and slowly streamed down his cheeks, not that you could see it considering his face was still squashed into a wall. These salty tears rather painfully stung him as they flowed down through the open, bloody wounds on his cheeks. It was about now that Tails started breaking down.

_This isn't fair! I feel too much hurt! Everything hurts, it hurts to move, it hurts to blink—it even hurts to cry! That's cruel! I can't take this! No more pain. Pain, pain, go away, come again another day..._

And so, suddenly, the pain stopped.

Tails blinked. Then he blinked again. He blinked a third time for good measure. He pulled his head from the brick wall and looked up. No pain. He tentatively started moving his hands, repeatedly clenching them into fists and relaxing them. No pain. He peeled himself from the wall and stood up, cautiously flexing his limbs. No pain. Still, he felt uncomfortable in some ways, particularly his chest. He looked down at it and immediately saw the problem.

There was a jarring bump in the middle of his chest, one that didn't hurt when he touched it but was obviously sensitive to pressure. It was a broken rib. However, it didn't hurt. Nothing hurt.

The fox looked over his body carefully. He was bleeding fairly heavily, and he found gashes all over. His right foot was pointing in a direction that he knew was wrong, and his left shoulder—while still pain-free—didn't seem to be able to be quite as flexible as it used to be.

Tails was scared. His body was in terrible shape, and he knew the fact that he couldn't feel anything made it even worse. He needed to find a hospital.

It wasn't until now, when Tails finally directed his attention to somewhere other than himself, that the enormity of the attack hit him. Dead bodies, lying by his feet. Destroyed, toppled buildings everywhere. Raging fires bellowing out thick smoke that was quickly taking place of breathable air. And still the occasional far-off explosion.

Central City was in ruins. The missiles were obviously only part of the devastating attack that had hit the city. No one could help him. In fact, he was least injured out of everyone he could see, most were either dead or close enough that it barely made a difference. The kit blocked the mental images from entering his head, and tried to focus on the task at hand.

Okay, there was no one around to help him, that much was certain. An attack of this magnitude would obviously bring attention from the rest of the world, and rescue teams should arrive soon enough. So there was no point trying to leave the city, he'd be better off just waiting for help to arrive — and besides, he didn't think he'd have enough energy left to get anywhere past the city outskirts. So there was only one thing left to do: finish his original task.

And for that, it was time to fly.

Of all his appendages, the kit's tails were the least damaged by the explosion, probably because they were neither facing the missile as it detonated nor facing the wall when he slammed into it. It was a lucky thing, as he was able to fly just as fast as usual. He was looking for the one person in the city that he _knew_ survived the explosion—Gary-Stus never die that easily.

It didn't take long to find his target, the brownish-red haired human was crawling along a street, head down, for seemingly no reason other than just moving away from the center of the city, which Tails noticed during his flight was also the center of the blast radius.

_C'mere you,_ the fox thought, starting his dive toward the boy who was suddenly shuffling along much faster than before.

Tails landed right in front of the boy. The kid first looked up in a curious mixture of panic and despair, then tried to crawl another way, then realized that Tails had just circled around to block him again, then finally just hid his head in his shirt and cried.

The fox bent down and forcefully shoved the boy over so that he was lying on his back, then moved around to the other side of him so that he could look at the boy upright.

He titled his head and looked at the quivering face of Christopher Thorndyke. He peered down into The Wesley's eyes, deep into the dark orbs of wangst. Tails bent down a picked up a shard of edged glass that had obviously been apart of some window before the attack and pointed it at the weeping child.

"Sonic is _MY_ best friend! _Mine!_ NOT yours!" Tails screamed, his voice dripping with malice and anguish. A horrendously eager glint suddenly flashed in the fox's eye, and despite Chris already knowing what was coming, the glint only served to petrify him even further.

"No, NO! Please, stop! Somebody, _help me! _Please...Tails, this isn't you! Stop! _Stop!_" the Scrappy screeched while still lying helplessly on the ground, wailing his annoying wails for his life.

Tails would hear nothing of it. In fact, his brain probably didn't even notice that Chris was even _doing_ anything other than making loud, incomprehensible, irritating noises. Feral instincts firmly in place, the fox pounced on Chris and thrust the glass shard straight through the child's left eye, to the delight of Chris Thorndyke anti-fans worldwide.

Chris responded with a bloodcurdling scream of pure pain and terror, as he clawed at the bloody shard to no avail. Tails pulled the shard out of his eye socket, an act that was accompanied by a grotesque sucking sound, and thrust it in again, this time going in deeper and forcibly twisting the shard around inside the socket, cutting off bits of flesh and letting buckets of blood pool in the contours. All the while Chris continued to howl in pain and continued to weakly fight back.

And then the screaming, and the resistance, suddenly stopped.

_Ah, I must have hit a nerve._ Tails thought with some pleasure. The fox stopped twisting the glass shard inside his enemy's skull and pulled it out, contemplating whether that was enough. Then he decided to continue, as the were plenty of ways a creative writer could keep a Gary-Stu alive in this state. So he thrust the shard into the body again. And again. And again, and continued to do so until Chris's face looked no different than a bowl of bloody oatmeal.

With that, the fox stained with the blood of revenge finally stood up, quickly surveyed his surroundings of rubble and smoke, and walked off to somewhere more peaceful.

—

Tails gasped and quickly sat up from from his sleeping position. Staring from his right with a worried look on his face was Sonic.

"Hey, you alright buddy? You were really squirming and, er, shouting out a few things," Sonic half-whispered from beside him, the look on the hedgehog's face telling Tails that he really didn't need to know what he had been shouting.

The fox glanced over to Sonic, then moved his gaze to the surrounding forest, the feeling of dread from their predicament—which is what probably what caused the nightmare—returning to him. His jaw quivered as he looked down and hugged his knees.

"It was, it was awful, my dream," Tails stammered, frightened, as he hid his head in his arms.

Sonic's ears fell flat against his head with sympathy, and scooted a bit closer to his little brother. "What happened?" he asked carefully.

Tails started sobbing. "It was awful. It was another one of those dreams where Eggman destroyed the city, but this time I was hunting down some kid. It's like...no, I was really _hunting_ him down. Then when I got to him I...killed him. And it was so gory, so revolting. And I remember doing it, it felt so awful, but—" Tails suddenly lost the distressed tone of voice and put on a new, rather more disturbing one, the horrendously eager glint returning to his eyes. "—But it felt so _good _at the time too. It's like I really wanted this kid dead, I was...bloodthirsty, and...I liked it." The glint went away just as quickly as it appeared, and the fox started sobbing again. "But, I—I _didn't_ like it! It was...I felt scared, I felt scared of _me_."

Finally finished with his grieved ramblings, the fox just gripped his knees tighter and closed his eyes, trying to separate himself from the world around him and trying his best to forget about how much he loved maiming Chris Thorndyke.

Sonic, for his part, listened to everything Tails said and kept a straight face throughout, even though it was plainly obvious to anyone who knew him well that he was frantically trying to think of something reassuring to say.

The azure sleep-deprived hedgehog put his arm around his saffron sleep-deprived brother. "Tails, it was only a dream. Really weird, freaky stuff can happen in dreams, _I_ would know." Sonic laughed lightly. "It's best not to think them through too deeply. Who _knows_ what a dream could mean, or if it means anything at all. Just relax, and let's go back to sleep. I'm too tired for drama."

Sonic looked over at Tails and grinned, and, to his relief, after a moment's hesitation the kit grinned back. With that, the hedgehog flopped down back onto his sleeping bag and tried to go back to sleep, into what would hopefully be a dreamless rest.

Once certain the two sapients were asleep, the surveillance bot which had found them started its flight back to headquarters.

* * *

**A/N: As much as it doesn't seem like it, I don't hate Chris. Not at all. This hurt to write, actually. The events of this chapter occur ****_because metaphor_****, and that's all I'm going to say.**


	3. Amy: One Step Behind

"C'mon Cream, tie faster!" Amy Rose happily ordered her friend.

"I'm almost done, don't worry. You still have plenty of time," Cream responded, tying up the loose bands behind Amy's dress. Next to her was her mother, Vanilla, folding up and making pretty the sleeves of the pink hedgehog's gown.

"Thank you so much you two for helping me like this," said Amy to her two helpers as they worked away on making her look beautiful.

"It's our pleasure," Vanilla replied. "This is a big day for you, so of course we'll help you in any way you want us to. It's not everyday you get married."

Amy nodded. "Thank you so much."

The three girls were standing inside a small, dull yellow room, where dresses and make-up containers and other assortments of girl stuff were piled around the room in a semi-organized fashion. Directly in front of Amy was a full-length mirror, in which the hedgehog bride had probably looked at herself a hundred times since this morning. She looked at herself again.

She was wearing an absolutely gorgeous, purest-of-white wedding dress. At the top near her chest were repeated flower patterns in pale pink that, if you looked at her from a certain perspective, almost made it look like Amy's head was popping out from a bouquet of flowers—it looked nicer than it sounds. Lower down the dress, by her legs, the fabric separated into layers the folded over one another, each layer ending on a crescent shape. Three layers down, the dress reached her feet and completed the effect by lining the bottom end with a continuous line of silver.

It was beautiful.

_She_ was beautiful.

"Are you almost done, Cream?" Amy called to her rabbit friend.

Cream giggled. "You're so impatient! I'm almost finished."

The excited hedgehog squirmed on the spot. "Well of course I'm impatient, I've been waiting for this for so long..."

Cream smiled as she finally knotted the last band. "I know."

Vanilla stepped in front of her and bent down. "Now hold still while I put on your make-up.

Amy obliged and closed her eyes. She felt lipstick containers touch her face and press against her lips, she felt the rabbit's careful fingers press who-knows-what onto her eyebrows, and she suppressed a cough as some smelly powder puffed into the air and settled on her face. After about five minutes of this the mother rabbit said to her, "You can open your eyes now."

Amy did so, and was surprised by what she saw. She expected her face to look very glossy, and with a lot of obvious make-up on. Instead, she found that the make-up mixed with the colour of her face well, and, in fact, she looked almost the same. The difference was that the make-up highlighted and brightened just the right parts of her face so that she looked sharper—a good, if exaggerated, comparison would be seeing two pictures with one having a grain filter and the other one being clear. She had to say, this was much better than the "glossy" look she was used to.

She spun on the spot, trying to see her dress from every angle. "So," she said with refrained eagerness. "How do I look?"

"Great!" exclaimed Cream.

"You look wonderful, Amy," agreed her mother.

Amy smiled with a brightness that lit up the whole room. "Is everything ready out there?" she asked the older of the two rabbits.

Vanilla moved the blinds and peaked out the window into the courtyard. She made a subtle hand signal to someone outside, then looked back to the hedgehog and pulled her veil over her face. "Yes, I believe so. Go an' get 'im."

Amy didn't need to be told twice. Restraining her excitement, she adjusted the veil to a more comfortable position and then slowly opened the door and walked out into the courtyard. On cue, the instrumental of "Bridal Chorus" started playing as Amy walked through the aisle between the crowded seats toward the altar. She could feel her heart pounding against her chest, and she silently cursed time for making every moment feel like an eternity.

Glancing to the left and right from under her veil, Amy eyed the guests to her wedding. It seemed like there were hundreds upon hundreds of people sitting at her wedding, all sitting in fold-up chairs placed in rows on the grass. However, for some strange reason, she couldn't really focus on the vast majority of the guests—all of them looked like you were only seeing them from the corner of your eyes; like mass, unrecognizable blobs.

Even so, there were a few people Amy could definitely focus on, and, conveniently, they were all sitting in the chairs that were nearest the makeshift aisle. She looked to each of them in turn:

There were the Chaotix. Vector was wearing a smart-looking business suit, probably the same one he wore when trying to impress his clients. He sat straight up in his chair, and smiled a toothy smile to Amy as she walked up the aisle.

Next to him was Espio, who had added a dark blue dress shirt to his usual attire. He looked laughably serious—Amy was sure he was trying to look respectful, but instead he looked like he had a personal grudge against the chair in front of him.

Buzzing next to Espio was Charmy, who was wearing a black dress shirt that, judging by the look on his face, he would rather eat than wear. The hyper bee was fidgeting and squirming in his seat, obviously not used to having to stay silent for so long. Amy was almost sorry for the "pain" she was putting the kid through. Almost.

Next, there were the Babylon Rogues. After one quick glance at the figures of Jet, Wave, and Storm, Amy looked away and resolved not to look that direction again. She did not like those three, and was angry that they had the nerve to show up at her wedding.

Next, she turned her attention to the third row, where Blaze was seated. The fiery feline was wearing a glamourous, silk robe embedded with emeralds and sapphires—a dress obviously only fit for a princess. Amy was torn between feeling embarrassed and insulted the violet cat would come to her wedding wearing something obviously fancier than the bride's attire. She eventually decided on insulted and planned to give her a good one when this ceremony was over.

Temporarily burying her jealousy, she looked at the hedgehog sitting beside Blaze—Silver. The hedgehog, having been given the gift of a fur colour that could only be described as stale grey (not, as he liked to say and what his name implied, silver) had tried to mask his boring fur colour by wearing a tuxedo with a jacket that looked like it was made of glossy silver scales that layered on top of one another. Amy had to admit, he didn't look bad. Now if only there was a powerful enough hair gel in existence that would be able to keep his head from looking like a starfish—then he'd look perfect.

Next, she got to Shadow and Rouge. If Espio looked liked he had a personal grudge against the chair in front of him, then Shadow looked like he was ready to chain the chair in front of him down to a hospital bed, dissect its vital organs while it was still alive, and dispose of the body by forcing it through a paper shredder. Rouge noticed this, and kicked his leg periodically to keep him from entering la-la land. Amy noticed with curiosity that neither of the two wore anything but their usual getup—which, in Shadow's case, was nothing but shoes and gloves. _Probably think they're too good for me,_ Amy thought bitterly.

Finally, as she approached the altar, she came to the only person left sitting that she was able to focus on. Knuckles the Echidna was sitting in the front row seats wearing a fairly plain suit...and smiling. Yes, she had seen the guardian smile before, but this was different. This smile was actually a happy smile, not the smile that got plastered on his face when he couldn't resist grinning at a bad pun uttered by Sonic. Amy felt good that there was at least one person here besides her that actually seemed to be enjoying this wedding.

Stepping in time with the emotionally overpowering theme of "Bridal Chorus", she reached and turned her gaze to the altar. There was Sonic, standing stiff and still for once up there, smiling at her a warm smile that tugged on the strings of her heart. She smiled back at the hedgehog from under her veil, noting how handsome the blue blur looked in his classic black-and-white tuxedo.

Yes, if things had gone well between them, perhaps he would be the one Amy might have married. But alas, he was only the best man in this wedding. On Sonic's immediate left Amy saw the figure of her groom, standing almost as stiff as Sonic against late-afternoon sun...Tails.

Her heart thumped in her chest as she saw the fox—_her_ fox—smiling his charming smile as she approached him. His eyes twinkled as they caught the light of the sun, and when he looked at her she could feel the love emanating from him. Tails was wearing a tux near identical to the one Sonic was wearing, and, like the hedgehog, she was surprised by just how handsome he looked in the fitted, sharp, classic clothing.

Seeing her fox up there, it reminded her of a song that she had first heard long ago. She wasn't certain, but she guessed she heard it around the time Sonic first met Tails. She had forgotten its name, but remembered the beginning of it: _"We lay like lovers in a warm embrace / Your kisses thrill me like no one before / Baby, I'm all yours / Living just for you..."_. She softly hummed it to herself as she walked.

Amy finally reached the altar. She and her soon-to-be-husband eyed each other for a moment, then both turned to acknowledge the minister standing there, quietly. On cue, the soothing organ music stopped playing.

The minister, a green ostrich, cleared his throat and began speaking. "Friends, we would like to welcome everyone on this joyous day in this beautiful setting. We would like to thank everyone who has traveled far and near to come here and share this joyous moment in the lives of Miles Prower and Amy Rose. We are gathered here today in the presence of friends and family to celebrate one of life's greatest relationships, the union between..."

At about this point Amy realized that she had heard this near identical speech in almost every chick flick she had ever watched, and decided to tune out the minister's ramblings for the remainder of the session. Instead, she focused her attention on the breeze, flowing through her quills, and took her time to appreciate the feeling of freedom, symbolized by the wind.

She remembered how Sonic had once said that one reason he would never marry is that he would feel too tied down, he would lose his freedom that characterized him so well. He said he knew that he would simply regret it before long if he did marry. Amy considered what the hedgehog had said for quite a while.

A squeeze of her hand by the fox beside her reminded Amy why she chose to marry. _Unlike you, Sonic, I won't regret this. I know I won't._

With surprise, Amy suddenly noticed the minister was talking to her. "—y Rose, do you take Miles; to be your wedded husband; to have and hold from this day forward; to love, comfort, and honour; for better or for worse; for richer or for poorer; in sickness or in health; to laugh with you in joy; to grieve with you in sorrow; to grow with you in love; as long as you both shall live?"

"I do." Amy almost choked on the words, though she didn't know why.

The minister addressed the crowd, "Now that Miles and Amy have given themselves to each other by solemn vows, I announce to you they are husband and wife." He now addressed Tails, "You may kiss the bride."

The husband and wife turned toward each other. Amy kept her gaze on the other's bright blue eyes as he raised the veil from her face and leaned forward to kiss. The moment their lips met the pink hedgehog realized something was wrong. Tails immediately broke the kiss and stiffened. His eyes were emotionless and glazed over as if he could no longer think. The image of Tails suddenly became blurry and full of static, before simply shattering like glass.

Amy screamed as the blobs in the audience started breaking down and transforming into sorts of all-consuming creatures. The sky broke like a mirror. Sonic suddenly turned into Eggman. An image of Cream's dead body flashed before her eyes. An image of the Tails Doll suddenly replaced the figure of Tails next to her. Amy was in the center of it all as her dream simply broke apart around her...

—

Amy gasped and quickly sat up from from her sleeping position, waking up in a room that initially didn't seem to be her own but, in fact, and as she soon realized, was.

She sat up in her bed, breathing deeply as she remembered the events of her dream. She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Her brain was unable to supply a word that would adequately describe her thoughts.

She closed her mouth, giving up. In a state of absolute disbelief, Amy flopped back down onto her bed and willed her body to go to sleep and have a dream that was _right._

—

Her next dream was nearly exactly the same as her first one, but this time Sonic and Tails were in their correct positions—Tails as the best man and _Sonic_ as the groom. With a sigh of relief, Amy eagerly played out her fantasy of marrying the great Sonic the Hedgehog.

However, at the last minute, Sonic unexpectedly changed his mind and married Shadow instead.


	4. Knuckles: Broken Heart

It was a beautiful day on Angel Island. The sun was shining brightly, the birds were singing melodically, and the clouds were as high and as white as...er, clouds.

Knuckles the Echidna was sitting on the steps leading up to the Master Emerald shrine, staring at a rock. He was, in fact, having a staring contest with this rock. Unsurprisingly, he always lost. After about seven minutes, he lost the contest with this particular rock too.

The bored echidna sighed and leaned back into his usual spot in the contours of the Master Emerald. Following his usual routine, Knuckles stood up, looked around at the surrounding forest, then yelled at the top of his lungs "_I know you're there! You can't fool me!_" toward the desolate mess of trees and flora. He did this about every hour in case there actually _was_ someone there—he figured thieves would be more likely to reveal themselves if they thought they had been caught. Of course, no one ever actually _has_ revealed themselves when he did this.

So you can imagine Knuckles'ss surprise when someone did.

"Ooh, you _caught_ me, red handed." Rouge pouted patronizingly, all too aware of Knuckles's habits. She was lightly flapping her wings, hovering ten feet in the air right over the guardian's head so that he wasn't able to see her during his staring contest.

Knuckles's head immediately snapped around in surprise, looking up at the figure of his favourite thief. Outwardly he growled at her, but inwardly he smiled. Rouge's arrival would at least temporarily change the day up from the usual boring followed by more boring with a side of snoring. And besides, the bat barely even tried stealing the emerald anymore.

Rouge landed in between the guardian and the Master Emerald, knowing that the action would annoy him. As expected, Knuckles growled again and quickly placed himself between her and the emerald. Rouge laughed at the growl. "Aren't you happy to see me?" she asked, already knowing that he _was_, even if he didn't show it.

Knuckles raised an eyebrow. "What are you doing here?"

The bat grinned slyly. "Oh, you know, nothing else to do, so I came here for some amusement."

Knuckles folded his arms over his chest. "You've got an entire world to do anything you want in, why choose to find your amusement by trying to annoy the guardian of the most powerful and dangerous object in existence?"

Rouge looked around in faux-contemplation. "I'm here for the wonderful company," she said before long.

The echidna grunted in reply, barely being successful at fighting down the blush that threatened to creep up his face. _That was stupid, Knuckles, stupid! _he scolded himself. _Don't let that bat affect your emotions so much. It's bad enough as it is!_

Said bat, wearing her usual skimpy outfit, knowingly grinned at the scarlet echidna, seemingly waiting for him to do something. Knuckles wasn't obliging, so Rouge started up a new conversation. "How can you possibly stand sitting up here with this rock all day?" she asked him, waving her arms around to indicate the entire island. "I'd go mad! What do you do up here?"

"I hold staring contests with rocks." Kncukles said this so matter-of-factly that it was impossible to take his tone of voice seriously, nevertheless the absurdity of the statement _itself_.

Rouge laughed at the obvious joke. "No, seriously though," she said, with a different type of smile on her face this time. "What do you do up here all day?"

The guardian gave her a blank stare, and inwardly rolled his eyes. "I'm not sure you'd want to know," he answered eventually.

Rouge returned the blank stare, then started looking around the island again, thinking. Neither of the two said anything for a while. Out of the blue, the bat asked her next question: "What do you eat here, anyway?"

"Fruits," Knuckles stated, simply.

"Mm, what would you say was the fanciest meal you've ever eaten?"

The echidna had to think about that for a moment. "I think an omelette at Sonic's."

Rouge had an almost annoyed look on her face. "You've never been to a restaurant, have you?"

"Nope. Nor would I ever go to one with you. You'd probably go to the fanciest restaurant in town and skimp out on the bill."

The bat scowled. "First, I _always_ pay the bill at a restaurant, if I didn't the server would have to pay the management the money I owe out of her own paycheck. It's cruel. Second, you'd never find me at one of those 'fancy', 'romantic' restaurants. Those places are so phony I want to puke!" she exclaimed.

Knuckles was surprised at her sudden outburst, but made sure not to show it. "You're not a fan of romantic diners, eh? You could've fooled me, seeing how you wear a shirt with a big pink heart in the center of it."

Rouge looked down at her chest. Then she looked up at the echidna. "What were you going to say about hearts last time I came?" she asked.

The sudden question sent Knuckles into a state of confusion. "...What?"

"Don't you remember? The last time I came here you mentioned that you were thinking about the heart, and how it's so odd and interesting. Then you suddenly said that your ideas were stupid and you didn't want to tell me. Well, I'm curious. What was it?"

"Oh," uttered the guardian, remembering the event. "Well, yeah, it _was_ stupid. Tons of stupid thoughts run through my head when I'm sitting around up here. It doesn't matter."

"Well, tell me. I have nothing else to do, so I'm in a good position to listen," Rouge pointed out, then leaned back on one of the pillars surrounding the Master Emerald, waiting for Knuckles to start.

The echidna flustered. "It's not a big deal, Rouge, what's up with all this?"

The bat shrugged. "If it's not a big deal then there should be no problems here."

Knuckles gaped for a moment, trying to think of an argument against that. Nothing came to mind, so he just sighed and obliged. "I was just noticing how the heart seems to be controlled completely separately from the rest of the body."

Rouge raised her eyebrow. "Go on."

He sighed again. "Okay, let me explain. Something like a month ago I was feeling my heart beat and I noticed that no matter what I did I wouldn't be able to stop it from beating. I was doing nothing to make it beat, I wasn't physically aware that it _was_ beating, it just _beats—_and with absolutely no help from myself. I know that it's a vital organ, and so it _has _to keep beating to keep me alive, but not all the vital organs are like it. Breathing, for example, is vital, but I can easily hold my breath and temporarily keep my lungs from doing its job. But you can't do that with the heart."

Rouge laughed. "We probably can't 'hold our heart' because there'd be too many kids having 'How long can you hold your heart?' contests who then have early heart attacks when they became adults."

Knuckles ignored her, he was getting on a roll. "See, no matter how much willpower you put into it, you can't control your heart, at all. Sure, you can try to relax to slow it down and exercise to speed it up, but that's just taking advantage of knowing which activities make our heart beat faster and which activities makes our heart beat slower. There's no actually muscle that you can learn to control."

He took a breath. "The thing is, for me, this almost makes my life feel like it's based on my faith that my heart will keep pumping. I don't know how my heart beats, it just does it automatically with no interference from me. If my heart were to, for some reason, _stop_ automatically beating, I'd be helpless up here. There's no muscle I can will to start it beating again. However, if I were to somehow stop automatically _breathing_, that wouldn't be as bad—I guess I could still force myself to breathe until I got to a hospital or something. Sure, it'd be awful, but I might still survive.

"When I think about it, it almost scares me. The only reason we keep on living is because our body automatically does important tasks without letting us have any control over what happens. It's all controlled separately by what's like a read-only part of our brain. There's really nothing I could do if the automation stopped. It's as if I have my life in somebody else's hands, and I just have to keep faith that he doesn't get lazy and for some reason decides to no longer bother keeping me alive. Honestly, I find it really creepy. We're slaves to ourselves."

Rouge took this all in. "I never really thought of it like that." She paused. "...Nor do I really _want_ to think of it too deeply. I can't say it's a good thing to be mistrusting of your own body, Knuckles."

The echidna sighed. "Yeah yeah, I know, but these are just the types of things that go through my head up here."

A flicker of worry crossed the bat's face. She walked closer to him, "This island is going to make you go mad someday. Why don't you accept G.U.N.'s offer and let _them_ deal with protecting the emerald?"

"This is my duty," Knuckles said with a stoic face, arms crossed.

Rouge put a hand on his shoulder. "You're so stubborn, Knuckles. You _know_ that one person guarding that thing isn't enough, why don't you accept it?"

The guardian placed his head in his hands and shivered a slight bit. "This, this is what I do. I'm here because—"

"**OH, CUT THE TENDER MOMENT. IT'S MAKING ME SICK. WHEN I'M THROUGH HERE YOU WON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT ANY OF THAT**," boomed an electronically magnified voice through the afternoon air.

The two sapients on the island immediately broke apart and frantically started gaping at the air. "What was that?!" Knuckles yelled.

They never found out. The next moment the echidna heard Rouge shouting at him. "_Watch out!_"

Knuckles turned around just in time the missiles coming. A few were going for him, and a few to Rouge. They were fairly large, but slim and sleek things. They were shiny and chrome-plated for seemingly no reason other than just showing off how much cooler the thing that was about to kill you was than yourself. On the sides on each missile there the image of a very recognizable face, spray-painted on with red, glossy paint.

Knuckles took a moment to snarl at the face.

Acting on reflex, Knuckles dived behind some rocks, head first. He ignored the pain when he hit the ground hard, and he covered his head with his arms hoping that this precaution would lessen the effect of the blast.

It did, but only barely. The blast lifted him off his feet and violently threw him into the air, flinging him back about eight feet. He harshly skid across the rocky earth, scraping bits of skin off and creating bloody gashes all over his back and thighs. He was blinded by the flash of light the explosion produced, and when he finally stopped skidding all he could do was wither into a ball and helplessly let the pain ebb through him like a poison.

_No. No. This isn't right. I've gone through worse pain than this. Gotta get up...I need to get up..._

Fighting his body every step of the way, Knuckles uncurled himself and dragged himself to his feet. His muscles and bones groaned with the effort, and Knuckles couldn't keep the image of a someone attempting to drive a rusted, century-old car from coming to his mind.

He didn't know where the Master Emerald was. He didn't know whether it had been stolen, or whether it had been blown into a hundred pieces by the explosion. He didn't really care, either. Something much more important had distracted him from worrying about the rock.

"Rouge. Rouge! Where are you? _Rouge!_" the echidna weakly yelled toward the emerald shrine, which was oddly nearly undamaged by the explosion. He limped his way toward ground zero, hoping and praying that the bat was okay.

Sadly, hope has no bearing on reality.

He found her lying in the grass with a hole in her stomach. Even worse, Rouge was still conscious, and it was clear from her contorted face that her injury was just as painful as it looked. At one point, with some difficulty, she lifted up her head to take a look at what was causing all the pain, and for just a moment her pained face changed into a disgusted face, obviously grossed out by the bloody, sickening crater in her gut.

Knuckles knelt down beside her. Simply by habit, he was tempted to say 'Are you okay?' but he knew that was a thoughtless thing to say in the circumstances. He knew there was nothing he could do. They were nowhere close to a hospital, and no amount of ice or CPR or any of that stuff could help someone whose heart was committed so throughly toward pumping all the blood out of her body. Even if she wanted to stop her heart, keep it from pumping blood into the veins that were leaking, she couldn't because there was obviously nothing one could do to control one's heart. The irony was sickening. Hardly two minutes had passed since their discussion and fate was already screwing them over.

Rouge looked up into the grieved face of the guardian, looking down at her as he grasped her lifeless hand. Using her remaining energy, she took her last breath and opened her mouth. "Don't tell me the last thing I see before I die is your ugly mug," she said, with a glint still left in her eye.

Knuckles didn't know how to respond. In fact, he hardly even heard what Rouge had said. He was watching death occur and it horrified him.

Rouge spoke again, surprisingly calmly. "I'm thirsty. Can I have some water? Please, I'm really thirsty."

Then her heart stopped. This was noticeable, as it had been beating so hard that it shook her frame every time it had beaten. Even if she wanted it to keep on beating, at least long enough to say one more thing, there was nothing Rouge could do about it. She died with a sad smile on her face, the look of one who understood the irony and somehow still appreciated it despite the circumstances.

Knuckles was still for a long moment. He felt watery pricks at the corner of his eyes, and he made no attempted to keep them from flowing down his face. He made no noise, though.

Finally, he stumped down into the grass, wallowing in a curious mixture of grief and denial. This was not happening. This had never happened. He was just having a dream. A cruel dream. Rouge was not there. She couldn't have died, because she was right there, alive.

Letting his weariness and his injuries and his depression overtake him, he closed his eyes and dozed off.

—

Knuckles gasped and quickly sat up from from his sleeping position, waking up inside a cave he was hiding out in. Behind him, glowing very softly as if it knew it was way past its bedtime, the Master Emerald resided. Though, once again, it was his _other_ jewel Knuckles that was concerned with at the moment.

Relief flowed through his body when he saw Rouge, his new fellow guardian, sleeping soundlessly next to him. It hadn't happened, he remembered. It had never happened. It was just a dream. A cruel dream. Rouge wasn't with him on Angel Island. She couldn't have died, because she was right there, sleeping next to him, alive.

Satisfied, the echidna lightly stroked Rouge's stone cold arm for a moment (_'It's freezing in this cave! We need a heater'_), then lay back down to let the darkness of the cave swallow him up and lull him back into rest.


	5. Eggman: Dreams Come True

"Gentlemen, once again the time has come!" boomed an middle-aged, well-dressed man from the stage of the auditorium. "I can see we have some new faces this year, and I can also see some men who have been coming to this event every year since its inception. A note to all of you old-timers: be careful not to own all the newbs _too_ badly."

The audience of old, rich people laughed—not because the host was funny, but because it was the polite thing to do. Some of the old, rich people didn't even understand what the man up front was saying, but there was no advantage to being the only person not laughing at a joke.

Mr. Ivo Robotnik was sitting at one of the tables partly to the right of the stage, waiting patiently for the host to stop his introductions and get on with the event. Mr. Robotnik had been invited to this highly prestigious event due to his company, Robotnikinin Genes, finally making it into the top twenty most profitable companies in the world. Robotnikinin Genes discovered a patented way of fusing fossil fuels with nuclear ions, boosting the efficiency of fuel by three hundred fifty percent while barely affecting the cost.

Needless to say, Mr. Robotnik was a billionaire in a month.

The host continued, "I am pleased to announce that this is the very first year in which every invited guest has arrived. We thank everyone who has spared time in their busy schedule to come and participate in this exciting event. This has been the tradition of the rich for over a thousand years, and now it is your turn. In just a few moments, the forty-second annual Fox Hunt shall begin!"

This statement was met by a round of applause that sounded rather like the applause of an audience at a political conference that was forced to clap after every sentence just so that they would stay awake.

The host blabbed on. "Along with the regular foxes, we also have, like last year, ten sapient-drones ready for hunting. There are ten different types of animals here, each are larger and harder to catch than the foxes. However, each are worth at least triple points than the largest of foxes, so catching one may make the difference between a loss and a win."

Mr. Robotnik shuffled in his seat. This was getting more interesting.

"Due to complaints from last year, no sapient-drones capable of flying were included in this year's roundup. So, without further ado, let me familiarize you with what we have in store."

On cue, a large metal cylinder was lowered from the ceiling and was placed right next to the host. The front side of the tube, the side facing the audience, had a large plexiglass window so that the guests could see what was inside.

Inside the tube was Tails.

But not the Tails commonly known; instead, it was a Tails that had lost all sense of sapient life. He was rigidly pacing the the small area inside the tube on all fours, his sharp teeth bared in a bloody scowl. His fur was long, unkept and filthy, and his claws were long and sharp enough to slit your throat with ease. Perhaps the most disturbing of all, though, were the demented black and blue orbs that were his eyes. There was no hint of intelligent life behind those eyes, just pure, savage instinct.

Inside that tube wasn't Tails, inside that tube was a wild animal.

He was now an _it_.

The announcer started speaking again. "This here is a tails fox. This is a very unique type of fox as it has two tails, as you can see." Above the tube, a large, flatscreen display showed a live video feed of the tails fox from every angle, so that even people at the back of the room could see its two tails. "Due to this anomaly, and the scarcity of the species, the tails fox goes for a high price to both collectors and to those on the black market—whichever one is more in line with your business. It will be be worth twenty points for our hunt."

The audience clapped, this time slightly more enthusiastically.

Another tube was lowered from the ceiling, next to the tails fox's tube. The animal inside this tube appeared to be a blue hedgehog, looking just as wild as the tails fox beside it. However, even though this new creature had dried blood on his razor-sharp quills, and patches of fur missing, and its eyes were still devoid of intelligence, it still didn't look _quite _as rabid as the tails fox was. For example, it wasn't as filthy, it didn't have its teeth bared, and just in general it didn't look like it would kill you if you were less than ten metres away from it.

"This here is a sonic hedgehog. The sonic hedgehog species is known for being the fastest running land-mammal on Earth," proclaimed the announcer with his eyes gleaming. "This is a very troublesome bugger to catch due to its speed. Therefore, it is worth a huge sum of money to those who can find a buyer, and that is why it will be worth fifteen points. From personal experience, I can suggest that you must get up close and personal with it if you even _hope_ to catch it. It is not a fighter, due to only relying on its speed to get by. If you get a good aim on it before it runs away, you're set."

The next ten minutes consisted of introducing each sapient-drone in turn. Mr. Robotnik propped his elbow up on the table and rested his chin in his open palm as the announcer dragged on. The knuckles echidna, with its determined eyes. The blaze cat, with its otherworldly eyes. The cream rabbit, with its empty eyes. The mighty armadillo, with its resentful eyes. It went on and on.

Finally, after ten tubes had been lowered, and after a few bad puns were uttered by the announcer in an attempt to be funny, a new voice over the loudspeaker yelled the words everyone had been waiting for: _"Let the Fox Hunt begin!"_.

Immediately the wealthy business owners were invited off their seats and ushered through into a separate room by the staff. Mr. Robotnik looked back and saw that the rest of the staff were using lifts to move the tubes into another room, probably one that leads to an exit.

Mr. Robotnik's mind was a blur as the preparations began. They were first all given a heavy armor overcoat, then a tranquilizer gun, then a rifle, then a backpack full of supplies. Then they were all given rabid-looking dogs that apparently would lead them to the foxes they were hunting—the leashes of the dogs were all firmly attached to the hunters' wrists for "safety reasons". Finally, they were shooed out through a second door that lead to outside.

The last thing any of them heard from the staff before the door was closed was, "Try not to die, it's bad for business." While appreciating that the comment was supposed to be humourous, it sent Mr. Robotnik into a state of mild terror all the same.

The group of wealthy men found themselves within a forest. Or, rather, a story-book version of a forest, with no grime or mud or bugs or anything to distract the men from the hunt. Surrounding them were beautiful old maple trees—and _only _maple trees—which's trunk height and breadth of all the healthy-looking leaves created a dense canopy of green, of which the sky could not been seen through. However, it was still very bright on the forest floor, despite the sun's rays being blocked by the trees. It was almost as if the brightness didn't come from any specific source, but rather the surroundings were all illuminated. It was perfect hunting conditions: it was comfortably bright but there was no glare from the sun to disorient them.

Mr. Robotnik had barely any time to think about how undeniably, artificially _perfect_ this "forest" was before he realized that his hunting dog was already charging into the depths of said forest, and he was being pulled along with it. The wealthy man frantically tried to tear the leash from his wrist, but quickly found that it was attached too tightly to get a grip on. Out of options, Mr. Robotnik sprinted after the dog as fast as his blubbery fat would allow him to, not liking the idea of face planting and being dragged through the dirt by "man's best friend".

Swallowing his pride, the wealthy man looked back at the _other_ wealthy men and was about to yell for help...when he saw that every other dog was acting the same way. All the hunters were being pulled deep into the forest in different directions, effectively separating them all. Robotnik would've groaned if it wasn't a waste of much-needed oxygen. And he definitely needed that oxygen. Every pounding step he took following his dog was matched by a sharp intake of breath and a thumping heart beat. If he wasn't in a state of total panic and closing in on exhaustion, he might have appreciated the nice rhythm of the run. It was very on-time for for such chaos; it was perfect, just like everything else in the forest.

The dog started running faster. Mr. Robotnik couldn't run any faster than he was already, so he just gave up and collapsed. For about three miserable seconds he felt bits of gravel cut into his skin, his head bump across random rocks, and all the regular symptoms of being dragged across a forest floor.

After said three seconds were up, he suddenly noticed he had stopped. He pulled his head up out of the dirt to see his hunting dog continuing to charge deep into the forest, half a leash trailing behind. Within just a few moments, the dog was completely out of sight and the sound of mad barking had already grown dim. Weary, the doctor hauled himself off the ground and reeled in the leash to see how it had broke. What he found on the end surprised him.

It was a quick-release cord. It was supposed to break.

Mr. Robotnik had been warned ahead of time by a colleague that the organizers of the Fox Hunt always deliberately set up a scenario—different every time—in which the hunters would be forced to separate from each other and become lost in the vast expanses of forest in the process. Despite this, the Doctor was disgusted at the arrogance and lack of respect the Fox Hunt Committee gave toward their attendees, and was similarly appalled at the brutal and humiliating way the Committee followed through with their plan. Robotnik was almost tempted to radio in his headquarters and unleash his secret robot army upon this place.

Nevertheless, he swallowed his gripes and reminded himself that all the other hunters probably just went though this exact same situation, and none of _them_ had tried to wreck havoc upon this place yet. He wouldn't want to become the first. It would just be embarrassing.

With that, Mr. Robotnik hauled his rifle up over his shoulder and began his meandering hike to try to track down and capture the two-tailed fox and the rest of the sapient-drones.

...

Only a few short steps later and Mr. Robotnik started to hear some rustling in the bushes ahead of him. Amazed by his luck, Robotnik quietly took a few steps back and took cover behind one of the many maple trees the forest offered him. Twisting his head to the side to take a peek, he saw both a sonic hedgehog _and_ a blaze cat together in the bushes only a couple hundred feet away! Unbelievable! Two sapient-drones _together_! Fate appeared to be a friendly fellow today, for once. Robotnik had every intent of taking advantage of it.

The hunter reached down and pulled out his binoculars to get a close look at his prey. The easiest shot would be the blaze cat—it was lying on its stomach, claws bared and eyes focused on a distant object that Robotnik was unable to see from his vantage point. But more importantly, there was nothing but some leaves and shrubbery between him and it. Nothing that could deflect or block a well-aimed tranquilizer dart. This would be a piece of cake, as long as the drone didn't move.

Getting at the sonic hedgehog would be tougher. It was behind the blaze cat, looking a bit disoriented and reflexively nibbling on the tip of the blaze cat's ear, an act the violet drone appeared to not even notice. The problem was that the sonic hedgehog was also lying low to the ground, which meant that no matter where he aimed, the blaze cat would be in the way of his shot. He did not dare risk targeting the top of the hedgehog's exposed forehead at this distance—he would most likely miss and shoot the dart into its quills instead, blowing his cover. The only way he could get the both of them would be to shoot the blaze cat first, and then immediately after fire a blind shot slightly above the cat's body, hoping that the blue blur would first raise its head in shock before it tried to escape into the forest. With good timing and luck's blessing, the dart would find its mark in the raised head of a shocked sonic.

Congratulating himself on the brilliance of his plan, Robotnik immediately loaded a double round into his tranquilizer gun and pressed it against the tree, using the bark's rough surface as a crude stabilizer. A shot from this distance, especially considering the leaves and shrubbery partly blocking his view and his own relative lack of experience with marksmanship, would have to be delicate. Shoot straight at the blaze cat's torso: the larger the body mass, the less chance of missing the target. After pulling the trigger, wait a half-second for it to automatically reload. Then raise the gun barrel by one-quarter inch and shoot again, hoping that the sonic hedgehog's head got in the way in time. There was no time to waste. Robotnik pulled the trigger.

To its credit, the blaze cat sensed the dart approaching it before it hit. The feline made a valiant and remarkable effort to dodge the bullet, considering it was moving at the speed of...well, a bullet. Alas, the dart punctured its thigh muscle as said muscle was right in the middle of contracting, ready to jump out of the way. You could see the shock in the blaze cat's eye, replaced almost instantly by emptiness as the tranquillizer sent it into a nice, peaceful sleep.

The sonic hedgehog yelped as it saw its friend fall limp beside it. Showing a grand display of cowardliness rather unlike its sapient counterpart, the blue blur leaped up at inconceivable speed and charged away from the unseen threat, leaving its feline friend to its fate. By the time Robotnik's gun finished its automatic reload—one half-second later—the sonic hedgehog was already a few miles away.

The doctor scowled. What a waste. The blaze cat was hardly worth anything compared to the sonic hedgehog, and now that the hedgehog knew what area he was hunting in it wouldn't be coming back.

_Damn, _he thought. _Well, I guess I shouldn't complain. It was pure luck that I found two sapient-drones in one place at all! Speaking of which, I wonder where all the regular foxes are...the forest is supposed to be filled with them..._

Robotnik briskly walked over to the sapient-drone's fallen body, attempting to push the tree branches and trigs out of his way. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a hammer and a large yellow nail engraved with the initials "I.R.", and then picked the animal up by the tail and held it up to a nearby maple tree. Carefully placing the nail in the center of the tail's tip, he picked up the hammer started to nail the blaze cat's tail into the tree. When finished, he let go of the cat and let it hang there upside-down. It would probably be very painful for the blaze cat once it woke up, but for now it was still in blissful sleep. Fox Hunt employees would soon come around and collect all the sapient-drones nailed to trees, using the initials on the nailheads to determine who had caught the drone. A rather cruel system, but it was convenient and it worked.

Robotnik was satisfied. He had already caught a sapient-drone, one of only ten, and he still had a whole day left to try to catch more. He put away his nails and hammer, swung his rifle back over his shoulder, and turned around ready to continue the hunter's hike...

...And found that his way was blocked by the tails fox. What luck! He'd found three sapient-drones within ten metres of each other so far! They must be attracted to this area, for some reason. Fate was a friendly fellow indeed!

The tails fox was standing upright on its bare feet, teeth bared and snarling; a horrendously eager, bloodthirsty look in his eyes. _I must be in their territory,_ he realized. _No wonder they seem to be concentrated around this area. No matter, I may have lost any element of surprise, but I could catch enough of them here for it to be worth it._ Robotnik grasped hold of his rifle, pointing it straight at the aggressive-looking sapient-drone_, _ready to shoot at the slightest movement of the animal in front of him.

The tails fox look unthreatened by the gun pointing at its chest—if anything, it looked oddly amused.

"So, you just tried to do it again. You tried to hurt my brother, but Blaze was in the way, _again_. Isn't doing it once, in real life, enough for you?" the tails fox said, suppressed anger bubbling underneath the calm tone of voice.

What? How could this be? These were wild animals, they weren't supposed to talk! What's going on?

The tails fox laughed; a sharp, harsh intake of breath that didn't sound much like a laugh at all. "So, is that how you satisfied your conscience, Eggman? By thinking of us as _animals? _As wild beasts that need to be put down? Is that what this dream is, a big metaphorical look at your subconscious? Is this the illusion you created for yourself to satisfy the part of your brain that was keeping you from hurting things that could _feel?_ Well, whatever it was that caused it to happen, you did successfully flick _off_ the switch in your brain that was holding you back, and I have to admit it totally worked. We lost, big time. Congrats."

Robotnik had no clue what was going on. The tails fox was speaking gibberish. Was he supposed to be listening or something?

It continued, a barely seeming to retrain his rage. "At least you've gotten one thing right in this metaphorical dream of yours, Eggman. I'm sure you _do_ have a bunch of murderous animals after you—whatever it was the snapped within you, snapped within all of us as well after what you did. God help you if Shadow was still alive...you thought of that, didn't you? That's why he was targeted first, wasn't it?" The tails fox seemed to get even angrier, if it were possible. "You should PAY for what you did! And yet your life has done nothing but _improve_ since the attack! Where is justice?! It used to be fast, now it's non-existent!"

The tails fox was still screaming incoherent mumbo-jumbo. Robotnik readied himself to pull the trigger, he hadn't any time for this.

"If justice isn't going to be doing anything...well, if you want a job done right you have to do it yourself!"

With that, the tails fox leaped into the air, teeth bared in an expression that suggested that it was preparing to chomp the doctor's head off when it landed on him. Robotnik pulled the trigger. He hoped he didn't miss.

—

Eggman gasped and quickly sat up from his sleeping position. _Weird dream_. A quick glance to his bedside table told him it was already eleven thirty in the morning.

Sighing, the obese scientist laid back down on his bed and clapped his hands twice. Immediately four robotic arms, designed by himself of course, grabbed hold of him and pulled him out of bed and placed him into a plastic holster that kept him from moving during the procedure. Quick as a flash, he was sent through a system resembling a car wash which first striped him of his pajamas, scrubbed him from head-to-toe, trimmed his moustache, rinsed and dried him, brushed his teeth, applied deodorant, and then clothed him in his usual getup of red yellow-buttoned top, black skin-tight bottom and boots, glasses, white gloves, and goggles-that-don't-do-anything, and finally deposited him onto his main command chair and the front of his base, looking out to the city of New Eggtopia. It all happened in forty-five seconds flat.

Such is the life of the luxurious/lazy. The type of life only the supreme emperor of the world could be excused for having. Which was exactly what Eggman was.

The Emperor of Earth leaned back in his chair and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He still wasn't fully awake despite not waking up until almost noon—the all-nighters from a few days ago must still be affecting him—but he supposed a lot of work and a stressful life were required consequences of having to govern a whole planet near single-handedly.

Beside him a square panel on his desk slid away, beneath it was a red and black sphere. The sphere hovered out of its holder, the panel slid back into its regular position, and then each of the sphere's hemispheres suddenly popped outward revealing underneath the familiar shape of the doctor's robotic companion, SA-55 "Orbot".

"Good morning, Emperor Eggman. How may I help you?" Orbot asked, using a posh butler tone of voice.

Eggman thought for a moment. "First, you may help me be filling me in on everything that's happened during my sleep."

The robot went silent. Eggman knew it was retrieving the information, and would start talking again in a few seconds as if nothing had happened.

He woke up and began speaking. "Very little has happened of interest. There was a small earthquake in Chun-Nan, but it did not significantly affect factory production rate," Orbot stated in a rather monotone voice. "However, I am pleased to tell you that our fight against the U.F. corporate executives may have finally come to end. Reading through their protests, I found that it really came down to the fact that they were protesting against the large amount of regulations put in place that controlled what they could sell and how they could sell it, _despite_ it being a so-called 'Free Market'. Realizing this, I stepped in personally and renamed the Free Market the 'Controlled Market'. That should remove the justification that legally allows them to continue their protests. Ergo, any further protests on the subject now can be suitably dealt with by the SWATbots. Problem solved."

Eggman gave a little amused chuckle at how easily it was to exploit legal loopholes in his new regime. This would have to be fixed eventually, he figured, if society were to stay stable, but for now it was rather fun to hear about how the latest person got screwed over through stupid means.

"Has the surveillance of the pink hedgehog yielded anything yet?" Eggman asked. Amy was one of the former heroes who had—resentfully—became regular members of (Eggman's) society, too broken and morose to run like Sonic and a few others did. She took up residence in an apartment in Eggman Empire City. Eggman had hoped that at some point Sonic would try and contact her, landing him right in the doctor's hands. Unfortunately, however, Sonic had tried no such thing, which either meant that he was smart enough to know that being anywhere _near_ a city was a very bad idea, or he had contacted her so sneakily that he evaded his twenty four hour surveillance bots. He doubted it was the latter; Sonic may be a lot of things but one thing he _wasn't_ was inconspicuous.

Again, the robot paused as it retrieved the information

He woke up. "As always, there has been no new information concerning Amy Rose or her contacts," he stated in a bored tone, resting his chin on one of his hands. "Doctor, I have never before seen you ask about Rose this early after waking up, before even doing anything else. Is there a reason you're particularly curious this morning?"

Eggman was rather surprised by the question. He didn't exactly know what expression he was wearing on his face as Orbot asked it, but he knew that it must have been pretty revealing as the bot hardly waited for an answer before answering himself:

"Let me guess, you had another dream where your conscience takes the form of Sonic or one of his friends and then blames you for everything that's wrong with the world," Orbot stated, sounding rather patronizing. Stupid robot. "Who was it this time? Shadow, cutting to the chase and killing you with a karate chop? Sonic, threatening to slice you in half with a spindash? Tails, acting crazy and pouncing on you like a wild animal?"

Eggman unconsciously brushed his hand against the scar stretched across his cheek, an injury caused by the foc. While he supposed he had it coming considering all the scars he knew Tails now had, hidden beneath his fur, he still had a grudge against the fox for ruining his perfect face. At least he learned a lesson from it: never go near a caged animal with claws.

Orbot noticed Eggman's action. He always did. "So, Tails this time, huh?"

Eggman was getting rather annoyed at his robot's uncanny ability to read him like an open book. He's tried changing Orbot's personality before, but, barring the time he tried giving him no personality whatsoever, no matter what personality he was given he eventually learned to be sarcastic and annoying all over again.

"It's none of your business," the doctor spat, sounding more defensive than he wanted to.

Orbot looked amused. "But Emperor, _everything_ to do with your well-being is my business," he said, so sincerely and so innocently Eggman wanted to puke.

Eggman sat up from his chair and pointed a menacing finger at his robot companion. "Now listen here, you lousy piece of scrap metal" he spat at Orbot. "You have NO business in my thoughts. If you continue to aggravate me, I will _remove _your personality chip. In fact, I'll dismantle you entirely! That way at least I won't have to keep on seeing your misshapen face everywhere I go. Is that clear?"

Orbot looked on unmoving, with a blank face.

Eggman waved his hand in front of the visual sensory receivers—the eyes—of the robot. "Hello?" he said.

"Please wait," Orbot said in a monotone.

The doctor knew immediately what was happening. Orbot was going through an information retrieval process, like the ones he went through earlier when Eggman had asked him status questions. In other words, Orbot was surfing the net in order to escape having to listen to Eggman's threats. "How _dare_ you ignore me while I'm speaking to you!" Eggman yelled, banging his fists on the table. "If you have any sense of self-preservation whatsoever you wi—"

"Sector ZZ9," interrupted the now-awake Orbot.

"Excuse me?" Eggman asked, confusion breaking him out of his rant. _Oh, maybe he was going through a legitimate retrieval request after all..._

"Sector ZZ9," Orbot repeated.

The doctor grimaced. "Yes, I heard you, what of it?"

"They found them. Sonic and Tails," stated Orbot simply, sounding rather shocked.

Eggman's face immediately contorted into something that could be best described as a mixture of incredulity, terror, and joy. "W-what?"

"The surveillance bots that were assigned the task of locating Sonic's whereabouts have discovered Tails and him in Sector ZZ9 of the North Pacific forests; ergo, they found them."

Eggman collapsed in his chair, he couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe after all these months of searching he's finally found them. "Status. What's the status?" he croaked.

"Sonic and Tails had a campsite set up in the wood, they're taking it down now and will probably leave the location within ten minutes. The surveillance bot found them during their sleep last night. Stealth bots have already surrounded the site and are awaiting orders."

Eggman leaned back in his chair. He couldn't believe it, he had almost given up hope. But it was true, Sonic and Tails had been found. And they would _not_ escape his grasp this time. He knew what he had to do.

"Order them to shoot. Shoot to kill."

Orbot started. "W-what?"

"Sonic is the largest threat to my power, my empire. If he were to gather some more people willing to fight back against me, I could lose everything I've fought for, everything I've earned," Eggman explained grimly. "Kill him. Kill both of them. They won't be expecting it, it'll be easy. I will _not_ let my conscience risk the stability of my civilization."

Orbot nodded, but hesitantly. "Yes, Master. Your order has been sent." He paused. "Oh, my, look at the time, it's nearly lunchtime. I'll go prepare something for you."

"Good, you go do that," Eggman said as a panel slid away and Orbot disappeared down a chute.

The Emperor of Earth relaxed and leaned back in his chair, very pleased at the sudden events of the last three minutes. If all went well, soon the thorn in his side that had persisted him for countless years will finally be removed. Maybe he would regret this later, but for now he couldn't be happier.

A grim smile crossed upon his face. "Sweet dreams, Sonic the Hedgehog."

FIN

* * *

**Finished. Yay.**

**As I assume you can tell, this was my attempt at a psychological, metaphorical mind-screw crack fiction. Each aspect of each dream is a metaphor for something or another, and each one explains and expands upon the "main story" of Eggman taking over the world (yes, even Amy's chapter. The point behind that chapter is stupidly subtle, but it's also the one the entire story is named after. So yeah). I know that no one who reads this could possibly understand every part of it, or even most of it, but... I don't care. This was a fic for ****_me_****, and ****_I_**** like it, even if no one else will ever truly understand what the purpose behind this is.**

**Thanks for reading.**


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